Category: Blog

Prison riots in Assiut

Posted on By 3arabawy

From the BBC:

A prisoner has died and more than 20 people, mostly inmates, have been injured during unrest at a jail in the Upper Egyptian city of Assiut.
Officials said the clashes followed rumors about an inmate’s death. Some prisoners rioted and took officers hostage and seized guns.
The violence continued for several hours. Police used tear gas and live bullets to regain control of the jail.
Earlier unconfirmed reports had said unknown gunmen had attacked the prison.
Four warders and at least 20 prisoners were said to have been injured in the clashes.
An Interior Ministry statement quoted by the Reuters news agency said the riot occurred when fighting broke out between four prisoners who attacked each other with cutlery.
Police intervened and punished the inmates with 48 hours in solitary confinement, the statement said.
Inmate Ali Abdel Salam died during his solitary confinement, after which “a rumour spread among the prisoners he had died because an officer assaulted him”, the statement said.
Conflicting reports
However, there is some confusion about the identity of the dead inmate. Another report named him as Hani Ghandour, who was serving a seven-year sentence for assault.
Another report said Ghandour was killed during armed clashes after a group of 15 gunmen had stormed the building in an attempt to free prisoners.
There is no explanation for the discrepancies in the dead man’s name or the reason which lay behind the violence.
Assiut – about 250 miles (400km) south of Cairo – is the largest city in Upper Egypt, with a population of about 400,000 people. Its jail is reported to hold about 3,000 prisoners.
Correspondents say conditions in Egyptian prisons are often dire and overcrowded, and security personnel have been accused of abusing inmates.

Doctors movement condemn ‘salary increase’

Posted on By 3arabawy

From the Daily News Egypt:

The Doctors Without Rights movement denounced the pay raise offered by Minister of Health Hatem El Gabaly to doctors, Dr Mona Mina, official spokesperson of the movement told Daily News Egypt.
The movement deemed the raise “an underestimation of doctors’ deteriorating conditions and a horrible alternative to their call for a new doctors’ law,” Mina said.
Mina explained that the decision is a ministerial one that can change should a different minister be appointed.
“It would have been better if the minister had promoted a law to be approved by the People’s Assembly to indicate a specific pay raise that cannot be changed when another minister takes over,” she said.
The movement also criticized the fact that the salary increase is to go into effect “only when there are sufficient financial resources” and after doctors undergo evaluations.
Mina added that some of doctors will be granted the raises without any evaluations, while the majority will have to undergo evaluations determining their raises.
“The minister has also promised a salary increase for the months of July and August and that was never implemented,” Mina added.
According to Mina, the salary increase will not equally apply to all doctors. She explained that resident fresh graduate doctors – whose salaries range from LE 300–400 – will earn three times as much. While specialized doctors who have been working in the field for a longer time and whose salaries total around LE 600, will only receive a 30 percent increase in their salaries.
This is due to the ministry’s misconception that specialized doctors make more money than resident doctors because they own private clinics and work in private hospitals, Mina explained.
“Most of those specialized doctors are old and are not able to work in more than one place, also most female doctors cannot commit to private clinics due to family obligations,” Mina said.
She suggested the ministry allocate the salaries according to the working hours, instead of “basing it on a false assumption.”
However, Dr Hamdy El-Sayed, chairman of the Doctors’ Syndicate, lauded the raise, and considers it “one step forward.”